Introduction to Conversion Rate Optimisation Strategy
Understanding Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is defined as the percentage of website visitors who perform a desired action or "convert", such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. A high conversion rate indicates that your website and marketing efforts are effective at persuading visitors to become customers or subscribers.
Some common ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks are:
- 1-3% for cold traffic or first-time visitors
- 3-5% for returning visitors
- 5-15% for email subscribers and loyal customers
The Importance of Conversion Rate Optimisation
Optimizing your conversion rates is crucial for any business looking to maximize growth and revenue from their website traffic. The higher your conversion rate, the more leads you generate and sales you drive without needing additional traffic.
Benefits of conversion rate optimization include:
- Increased sales and revenue
- Improved cost efficiency of marketing spend
- Higher customer lifetime value
- Faster business growth
By testing and refining your website, product pages, calls-to-action, and funnel, you can dramatically improve conversion rates over time. Understanding user psychology and behavior is key.
What is conversion rate optimization strategy?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy refers to the overall plan and systematic approach for continuously improving conversion rates on a website or mobile app. This involves:
- Setting clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track, such as conversion rate, average order value, lead generation forms submitted, etc.
- Understanding user behavior through analytics to identify areas of opportunity and friction.
- Developing hypotheses and ideas for changes to elements like page layouts, calls-to-action, forms, etc.
- Validating proposed changes through A/B and multivariate testing.
- Analyzing results to determine winning variations.
- Implementing changes and continually monitoring performance.
An effective CRO strategy enables businesses to maximize conversion potential through incremental improvements over time. This is achieved by leveraging tools, analytics, and optimization best practices to gain insight into the customer journey.
The key elements of a CRO strategy include:
Aligning Goals and KPIs
- Set specific, measurable goals based on key conversion events.
- Identify relevant KPIs to monitor performance towards goals.
- Gain stakeholder alignment on priorities.
Understanding Users and Behavior
- Leverage analytics to analyze customer journeys.
- Identify pain points through qualitative feedback.
- Uncover optimization opportunities.
Developing Test Ideas and Hypotheses
- Brainstorm ideas to address friction points.
- Form hypothesis for how changes will lift conversions.
- Prioritize ideas with greatest potential impact.
Executing Testing
- Use A/B and multivariate testing to validate hypotheses.
- Ensure statistical significance with enough traffic.
- Analyze results to determine winning variations.
Optimizing and Evolving
- Implement winning variations site/app-wide.
- Continually test and optimize new ideas.
- Monitor KPIs to sustain improvements.
By taking a strategic, analytics-driven approach, businesses can realize substantial conversion rate improvements over time. The key is developing a culture of ongoing experimentation and evolution through structured CRO initiatives.
What are the steps of conversion Optimisation?
Start with defining your goals
Before you dive into conversion rate optimization (CRO), take a step back to clearly define your goals. What actions do you want visitors to complete? Is it signing up for a free trial, making a purchase, or downloading content? Outline 1-3 primary conversion goals that align to your business objectives. This focuses your efforts and helps measure impact.
Develop hypotheses
Next, develop hypotheses about why visitors may not be converting. Look at your analytics to identify dropout points or leverage user research to uncover pain points. Come up with potential fixes to test - e.g. simplifying checkout flow, adding social proof elements, tweaking page layout. Solid hypotheses set the foundation for successful experiments.
Prioritize experiments
With a list of hypotheses, prioritize what to test first based on potential impact and effort required. Quick wins build momentum while high-effort, high-impact tests may require more planning. Use a prioritization framework to map out experiments on a scatter plot. Revisit regularly as new hypotheses emerge.
Run A/B tests
Conduct structured A/B tests to validate your hypotheses. Make incremental changes rather than drastic redesigns. Allow sufficient time for statistical significance. Leverage tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely or Adobe Target to run experiments without engineering resources. Analyze results to determine if a variation outperforms the original.
Continual learning
View CRO as an ongoing process, not a one-time project. Experiment velocity is key for growth. Analyze test results to gain insights about your customers. Feed learnings back into new hypotheses and experiments. Continually refine and iterate to build a conversion optimization culture focused on data and testing.
What techniques would you use to improve conversion rates?
Use a CRO planner
A CRO planner allows you to map out experiments and optimization initiatives in an organized way. This ensures you methodically work through priority areas over time. I'd recommend creating a Conversion Rate Optimization roadmap that sequences tests by:
- Business value - tackle high impact areas first
- Effort required - combine quick wins with longer term initiatives
- Current performance - identify biggest pain points
Update this on a quarterly or biannual basis to stay strategic.
Shorten your forms
Long forms lead to drop off. Prioritize minimally collecting just essential user details. Progressively profile customers post sign up if required.
Include social proof
Build trust and credibility by spotlighting genuine customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, and user generated content.
Track how people interact with your site
Installing heatmapping software lets you literally see how visitors navigate your site. This identifies usability issues triggering early exits.
Add live chat
Immediate assistance when needed reduces drop off. Position a friendly chat bot or support agent prominently.
Test your offers
Not all offers resonate equally across segments. Trial promotional codes, pricing, packaging, benefits per persona.
Conduct A/B testing
Systematically test variations of copy, design, layouts, calls-to-action. Double down on what works.
Increase trust and remove friction
Display security certifications, ease payments, reduce form fields, simplify navigation, honor guarantees. Delight customers!
What are the elements of conversion rate optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is composed of four key elements that work together to boost conversions:
Conversion Research
Conducting conversion research allows you to understand your users and where drop-offs occur in the conversion funnel. This involves analyzing data to identify friction points and opportunities through surveys, user interviews, heatmap tools, etc.
User Experience (UX)
Optimizing page design, information architecture, copy, calls-to-action, forms, etc. based on conversion research to facilitate user goals during their journey.
Website Persuasion
Incorporating persuasion principles into page layouts, copy, multimedia, and calls-to-action to influence user behavior.
A/B Testing & Personalization
Running controlled experiments to test changes made to pages and personalizing content to match user needs and interests. Continually testing and iterating.
Mastering these four elements creates a cycle of constant optimization and learning through research, design, persuasion, and experimentation. By leveraging these, you increase conversion rates over time.
Crafting Your Conversion Optimisation Plan
Setting Measurable Goals
Setting clear, measurable goals is the first step in crafting an effective conversion optimisation strategy. Rather than vague objectives like "increase conversions", define specific, quantifiable goals aligned to business priorities - for example, to increase lead generation conversion rate from 5% to 8% in 6 months.
Follow the SMART framework:
- Specific - Clearly define each goal and outcome
- Measurable - Set quantitative targets to track
- Achievable - Set realistic goals based on current baselines
- Relevant - Goals should map to key business objectives
- Time-bound - Assign a specific timeframe
Setting SMART goals creates accountability and gives your strategy focus by identifying the desired outcomes for optimisation efforts to work towards.
Analyzing Your Current Conversion Rate
Before making changes, audit your website and marketing channels to understand your starting conversion baseline. Analyze historical performance data to identify how website visitors, leads, and customers currently flow through your conversion funnel.
Key metrics to examine per conversion funnel stage:
- Sessions-to-Leads % - Understand visitor → lead conversion
- Leads-to-Customers % - Evaluate lead → customer conversion
- Average Order Value - Assess customer profitability
Compare the above metrics week-over-week and segment data by acquisition channel, campaign, referring sites etc. Identify pages, campaigns and segments with the lowest and highest conversion rates to focus optimisation efforts on biggest quick win and growth opportunities.
Identifying Friction and Bottlenecks
Finding pain points inhibiting conversion involves assessing your website user experience, functionality and content.
Examine your visitor clickstream data and use heatmapping to identify usability issues. Analyze form drop off rates to uncover field-specific friction. Assess on-page time-on-page and scroll depth to gauge content effectiveness.
Conduct usability testing sessions to watch user behaviour first-hand. See where they struggle to convert and what questions arise. Send post-session surveys to uncover site objections.
Uncovering friction, bottlenecks and objections which impact visitor experience will inform conversion rate hypotheses and experiment prioritization in later methodology stages.
Defining Your Target Audience
Creating one or more detailed target audience profiles ensures your optimisation activities remain focused on converting high-intent, high-value visitor segments.
Key characteristics to define include:
- Demographic - age, gender, income level, location etc
- Psychographic - values, interests, personality traits, beliefs
- Behavior - where they spend time online, how they consume information
- Motivations - understanding their underlying needs and intent
- Objections - identifying pain points you can solve for
Leverage analytics to analyze your existing highest converting visitors. Conduct market research surveys to gather first-party data. Use tools like Google Analytics and social media audience insights to gather detailed characteristic data in aggregate.
Refine content, offers, promotions and website experience specifically to resonate with target audience needs and preferences for greater relevance, engagement and conversions.
Testing and Implementing Optimisations with Conversion Rate Optimization Tools
When it comes to improving conversion rates, growth hackers know that testing and optimisation are key. By leveraging A/B testing methodologies and conversion rate optimisation tools, you can systematically experiment with changes to your website or funnel and implement the variants that drive the best results. This data-driven approach takes the guesswork out of conversion rate optimisation and provides concrete proof of what works.
A/B Testing Methodologies
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a powerful way to compare two or more variants of a page and determine which one performs better. Here's a high-level overview of how it works:
First, you identify the element you want to test - this could be the headline, call-to-action button, form layout etc. Next, create a variant version - for example, a different headline or button colour. Using A/B testing software, you can show the original (A) and the variant (B) to different segments of visitors, then track the results to see which one converts better. The one with the higher conversion rate "wins".
When designing A/B tests, best practices include changing just one element at a time and allowing the test to run until statistical significance is achieved. This helps ensure the test results are valid and attributable to the change being tested.
Leveraging Conversion Rate Optimisation Tools
Growth hackers have an arsenal of SaaS tools at their disposal for conversion rate optimisation. Here are some of the most popular options:
- Google Optimize: Free A/B testing and personalisation platform from Google that seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics. Easy drag and drop editor to create tests.
- Optimizely: Full-featured testing and experimentation platform. Provides advanced capabilities for multivariate and personalised testing.
- Hotjar: All-in-one analytics and feedback service. Records visitors sessions, lets you create polls/surveys and heatmaps to understand user behaviour.
- Crazy Egg: Specialises in heatmaps and scrollmaps to study on-page engagement. Affordable entry-level option.
- Clicktale: Premium customer experience analytics tool. Offers sophisticated session recording and analytics capabilities like form analytics to pinpoint conversion drop-offs.
- Mixpanel: Focussed on product analytics and conversion funnel analysis. Track user journeys across platforms with advanced segmentation features.
Having the right conversion optimisation tools lets you test changes faster and base decisions on visitor behaviour data rather than assumptions. These services integrate with web analytics platforms like Google Analytics, facilitating easy reporting and analysis.
Best Practices for Implementation
Getting conversion rate lift from a test is only half the battle - you still have to successfully implement the changes without negatively impacting other metrics:
- Prioritise impact: Focus on testing pages and funnel steps with the most traffic and revenue potential first.
- Follow a process: Have a structured framework with defined hypotheses, success metrics and minimum test durations in place before launching tests.
- Optimise continuously: View conversion rate optimisation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time project. Tests often lead to new test ideas.
- Monitor effects: Keep a close eye on key metrics pre and post-test implementation to spot any undesirable changes. Be prepared to rollback changes if results differ.
- Communicate changes: Inform stakeholders about upcoming changes and report test outcomes through meetings, email newsletters etc. Transparency facilitates buy-in.
Following structured A/B testing and conversion rate optimisation best practices will ensure you scale your growth efforts smoothly and sustainably.
Tracking and Enhancing Performance
Defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Defining the right key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for tracking the success of your conversion rate optimization efforts. The main KPIs to monitor are:
- Conversion rate: The percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, like signing up or making a purchase. Tracking conversion rate optimization over time is key.
- Bounce rate: The rate at which visitors leave your website from the landing page without further interaction. Lower bounce rates indicate higher engagement.
- Average order value: The average amount each customer spends per transaction on your website. Lift in this metric contributes directly to revenue growth.
- Additional KPIs like lead generation, time on page, funnel drop-off rates, and micro-conversions should be defined based on your optimization goals. Choose a handful of KPIs directly tied to core business or conversion outcomes to gauge performance.
Analytics Tracking Tools
Using analytics tools is vital for tracking the performance of your CRO efforts over time. Some recommended options are:
- Google Analytics: The most widely-used web analytics platform that offers detailed insights into your website traffic and conversions.
- Google Optimize: A/B testing and personalization tool that integrates directly with Google Analytics for easy conversion tracking.
- Hotjar: Provides heatmaps, visitor recordings, conversion funnels, form analytics and polls to understand user behavior.
- Optimizely: Robust experimentation platform enabling A/B tests and multivariate tests with advanced analytics.
- Mixpanel: Specialized product analytics tool for tracking funnels, retention, behavioral cohorts, and core product metrics beyond conversions.
- Amplitude: Leading product analytics solution for tracking real-time user behavior events across web, mobile, and other platforms.
Integrating these tools with marketing platforms like CRMs can provide further visibility into the customer journey and attribution modeling.
Ongoing Testing and Optimisation
Effective CRO is not a one-time project but rather an ongoing process of continuous experimentation and improvement. Once the initial round of website optimization is complete, it is crucial to continue testing new ideas.
Some best practices include:
- Running at least 1-2 optimization experiments or A/B tests per month
- Building an optimization roadmap to prioritize experiment ideas
- Leveraging tools to make ongoing testing easier
- Closely monitoring performance metrics for early detection of dips
- Using always-on personalization to automatically serve experiences to segments
- Continually researching UX improvements and CRO case studies
By continually testing and iterating, you compound conversion gains over time. Treat optimization as a habitual process, not a project with an end date. The most sophisticated companies run hundreds or even thousands of tests per year. Continuity and persistence are key for long-term success.
Case Studies and Examples of Successful Conversion Optimisation
Case Study 1: Boosting Conversions with Strategic Changes
Acme Inc is an ecommerce company selling electronics and home goods online. Despite healthy traffic to their website, they were struggling to convert visitors into paying customers. Their shopping cart abandonment rate was quite high at 78% and average order value was lower than competitors at $45 per order.
The CEO of Acme Inc hired a conversion rate optimization (CRO) consultant to overhaul their website experience and boost conversions. The CRO expert started by conducting in-depth user research through surveys, user testing and data analysis. Key findings were:
- The product detail pages lacked adequate imagery and descriptions leading users to bounce back.
- Checkout flow had too many distraction elements like promotional popups.
- Mobile conversion rates were very poor due to a non-responsive site design.
Based on these insights, the CRO consultant devised a multi-phase optimisation strategy:
Phase 1 focused on quick wins like simplifying navigation, adding more product images and improving site search relevance. These changes increased conversion rates by 12% in just 3 weeks.
Phase 2 involved key structural changes:
- Redesigned responsive site templates for unified user experience across devices
- Streamlined checkout process by removing unnecessary fields
- Implemented exit intent popups with targeted promotional offers
Conversion rates improved by 29% over the next 2 months with the new streamlined purchase funnel.
Phase 3 changes were about personalization:
- Created customer segments and tailored product recommendations for each.
- Sent targeted post-purchase emails with incentives to increase repeat purchases.
With better segmentation, average order value increased by 18%.
Over 6 months, Acme Inc managed to boost conversions by 64% and revenues by 103% through the CRO program. The initial investment paid back within 5 months through higher sales. It became integral for Acme Inc to keep experimenting and optimizing based on data insights.
This example demonstrates how critical conversion optimization strategy is to maximize traffic value. With user research, data analysis and continuous testing, significant business growth is achievable.
Enrolling in a Conversion Rate Optimisation Course: Conclusion and Next Steps
Recap of Conversion Optimisation Strategies
We covered several advanced conversion rate optimisation strategies in this article that growth hackers use to rapidly improve website conversion rates without sacrificing user experience. Here is a brief recap:
- Implementing funnel analysis to identify and address leakage points across the customer journey
- Creating dedicated landing pages for marketing campaigns to directly track conversions
- Using A/B testing software to experiment with page layout, calls-to-action, content, etc.
- Building customer personas and journey maps to gain user insights
- Optimizing web forms and checkouts for low friction
- Using heatmaps and scroll tracking to understand user behavior
Tips for Getting Started
Here are some actionable tips to help you get started on optimising your website's conversion rates:
- Install analytics software like Google Analytics to start tracking key conversion metrics
- Conduct funnel analysis to identify the biggest leaks in conversion funnel
- Prioritize fixes for top leakage points, focusing on quick wins first
- Start A/B testing simple elements like button colors, placements, copy, etc.
- Review user feedback and surveys to better understand pain points
- Enroll in a conversion rate optimisation course to level up your skills
While conversion rate optimisation takes continual effort, getting started with some quick fixes and foundational knowledge from a structured course can rapidly impact growth. Use the strategies covered in this article as inspiration to create an experimentation and growth mindset when improving your website conversions.